When Hong Kong property billionaire Cecil Chao offered US$65 million (approx. Sg$100 million) to any man who could win over his lesbian daughter and turn her into a straight woman, he unwittingly laid the ground for her (by drawing fame and attention to her) to become one of Asia's most prominent LGBT rights campaigners.

â€œComing from a husband of an ex-teacherâ€¦Since AG deemed it fair for teachers to pay for their parking at their own expenses, I guess I can advise all my teacher friends to stop the following since itâ€™s â€œfair wages policyâ€�:

1. Childrenâ€™s day gifts, class prizes, motivation prizes, class treats, encouragement cards, motivation posters to help the students.
2. Additional study resources, revision notes created out of their own free time in the nights, weekends and holidays.
3. Class charts, decorations, motivation posters, photos printed out of your own money to make the classroom a more positive learning environment.
4. Marking, lesson planning, research done at night, weekends and your own â€œprotected timeâ€� during school holidays. After all, these should be done during your working hours in school right since AG wants to be black and white and you are not paid OT?
5. Answering parentsâ€™ messages, emails and phonecalls after your slated working hours at 5pm. Oh yes, donâ€™t even use your own internet and mobile data to do so since MOE DID NOT PAY A SINGLE CENT OF YOUR UTILITY BILLS. Doesnâ€™t matter if your student have any emergencies or life or death matters in the families. Itâ€™s fair wage policy remember? Must be fair to you.
6. Additional remedial/supplementary lessons/consultation time done after school to help students who are weaker/taking key exams etc.
7. Giving your students pocket money/buying them food and drinks if they have financial difficulties or going for excursions. After all, itâ€™s their own fault if they canâ€™t afford to bring snacks for long excursions right?

On top of that, teachers should stop doing the following unless a fee is paid for these non-teaching duties and responsibilities:

1. Bringing students out for overseas trips/SYF/rehearsals/community events which often fall on nights and weekends, sacrificing your own family and free time.
2. Coming back on weekends to conduct workshops for parents to help them help their own child. Come on, from teaching the child to teaching the parent as well? And for free some more??? Private tuition centres are charging from $50 per hour to $100 per hour for the kind of workshops you conduct!
3. One-to-one meetings with parents to deal with their childâ€™s issues. Some more sometimes get scoldings and shouted at for no good reasons. Even counsellors charge a hefty fee in private sector.
4. Planning and fighting for budget, writing proposals, getting quotations, and all the admin stuff of procurement. After all, these are not done during teaching time right?â€�

A buddy of mine's dog nearly died some years ago. Their cat had been acting strangely during the day, walking around the dog, meowing and licking it.
He was in bed in the evening when the cat went nuts, meowing very loudly and hammering on the bedroom door rapidly with its hind legs. He found his dog on the stairs with blood from its nose and mouth. A vet found out the dog had a blod clot in its lung, but managed to recover after some weeks. The cat had been aware of this and tried to tell its owner, but the fuck did it know?
Today cat and dog are totally inseparable. If he picks up the cat and carries it out of sight of the dog, the cat will struggle to get free, then rush to the dog to check if he's okay, then cuddle up next to him.

[Medicine] - A recent Stanford cancer treatment that cured 97 percent of mice from cancerous tumors has now moved on to human volunteers for a new cutting-edge medical trial. The trial is part of a gathering wave of research into immunotherapy, a type of treatment that fights cancer by using the body's immune system to attack tumors.

[Medical] - Does drinking coffee increase or decrease your risk of cancer? The answer is : both. There are naturally occurring compounds in coffee that decrease your risk of some cancers (as well as diabetes and other diseases), but the roasting process (just as the grilling / roasting / bbqing / frying / deep drying of many foods, particularly meats) does generate unnaturally occurring compounds (eg. acrylamide) that does indeed increase your risk of many cancers. You could always drink unroasted (ie. green) coffee instead, for the benefits without the risks.

Further, I am a dark skinned African American, so in Asia, often I have been confused with someone directly from Africa. I am also an IT Project Manager, hired in Singapore, to work at a large multi-national American bank.

I can count the obvious number of racial incidents I had experienced in Singapore on three fingers.

A mild form: around this time Jeremy Lin was big, and throughout Asia, ethnic Chinese were talking as if he would be the next Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant. I knew he was not, so I often got in arguments with people about this, and quickly found most of these people did not really follow basketball, and their arguments were based primarily on ethnic/racial pride. Once, while in a taxi, a Singapore "uncle" told me, unsolicited, that Jeremy Lin was great, because he uses "his brain", clearly implying black people did not. I took offense to this, and I said "I guess that is why you are taking me to X multinational bank, and you are my driver". I said this in Mandarin. He said he did not really speak Mandarin, so I said it in English. He said nothing else to me the entire trip.

Less mild: I am a very frugal person, something I think I picked up from years of being around East Asians. I used to workout in an neighborhood fitness center near Bedok, because it was very cheap, compared to the private gyms, and had everything I needed. I worked out a few times a week, so this was important to me. Most of the people who worked there were very friendly, they were older ethnic Malay, Indian...Chinese. One day a middle aged ethnic Chinese guy came up to me and started to question me as to what I was doing in Singapore. He then suggested because I was an ex-pat I could work out at a private gym. His tone was clear, "you don't belong here". I said "all ex-pats are not rich lah..." and then walked away. He stared at me awhile, then stopped. I never saw him again, which was good.

I was out with two other African Americans at a night club in Clarke Quay. We met an African in there, at first he was talking to some ethnic Indian girls, and tell everyone he was American. He obviously was not. I asked him where he was from, he said "New Jersey". I said 'where in New Jersey", he said "the city next to New York". LOL After a few drinks, he told me that he lies about being from the US, because Singaporeans don't treat him well if he says he is African. That being said, I met another African at a Hawker Center, who was there with his Singaporean wife and father-in-law, he had lived in Singapore 10 years, and he told me people were very nice to him, and he loved it there. He told me he ran a business with his in-laws, but to be honest I don't recall what type of business. He gave me a business card, but I never really looked at it or called.

I went to a job interview at a Swiss Multinational, IT PM work, I was qualified, experienced, etc. I was even somewhat of a domain expert. Three people had to decide on hiring me. A French ex-pat (technical director), a Singaporean PM (whom I was replacing), and a PRC business manager (who really controlled the budget). I was not hired. I knew right away I was not going to be, when the PRC woman kept asking weird questions, challenging me on every answer, asking basic questions you would ask a fresh graduate, asking me questions totally irrelevant to the project, etc. I was told later by the Indian recruiter that he had never seen anything like it. The French guy wanted to hire me, the Singaporean guy wanted to hire me, the PRC woman said I was not a good fit for the corporate environment and she questioned my qualifications. WHAT!?!? I worked at bigger companies, and ended up working at a much bigger company than theirs. I ran into the French expat at a bar, by chance, about a month later. He apologized to me, and said he wanted to hire me but the "PRC bitch was disgusting, so racist..." He said she controlled the budget and usually she does not question his judgement but it was clear she did not want a black man working there, so she made it a point to overrule him, and her boss were very close, so he supported her. WOW. Later I was hired by a Hong Konger to work at a large American multinational bank - like 2 weeks later - so I was not butt hurt about it. Living in Asia I expect racism, especially from Mainland Chinese people (for more on that: What is it like to be Black in China? )

I knew one black American woman (about my age, 30s). She never lived anywhere else in Asia, so her perspective was more limited. She was an IT PM at another bank. She felt people looked down on her for being dark and "fat", although in America she was not especially dark or fat. I've heard white expat women complain about the "fat thing", and I've heard ethnic Indians women complain about the "skin color thing", like women coming up to them at shopping malls offering them "skin whitening make-up", which most Westerns would find deeply offensive. I think also Asians tend to be more blunt (especially ethnic Chinese) about critiquing physical appearance, most especially when it comes to women...I'm used to that, she was obviously not. She got tired of Singapore and when I went to work in Shanghai, she went back to the U.S.

The other black American male I knew, seemed to share my opinions about Singapore, he was also single, and his only real complaint is that he felt ethnic Chinese women were not attractive and he preferred Indian and Filipinas, because they were more "relaxed" and shapely...I think he is also mentioned "they can dance". LOL

Anyway, most of the time I was in Singapore I lived in Aljunied, yes next to the infamous Geylang.

So to wrap up - Singapore - I loved it. I was single for most of the time I was in Singapore, after breaking up with a Taiwanese girlfriend. I dated a few Singaporean women, mostly ethnic Chinese, one Indian - I did not feel any obvious racism (like in China, and even less than in Taiwan and Japan, which I judged as mild). It was clear that many of the SPG women who wanted to date a "foreigner" wanted an angmo (white foreigner), not a "olang" (black foreigner), but I do think that speaking some Mandarin, and also being American, and native English speaker helped quite a bit. On average, I would say in Asia, it is better to be African American than a black African, but the benefit really depends on how sophisticated or knowledgeable the local population is in telling the difference - more on that - What do African Americans think of African Africans who pretend to be African American in Asia?

Honestly, compared to living in Mainland China, Taiwan, and Japan, - I believe that Singapore is the best place as far as living condition, pace of life, and lack of xenophobia. It is the only place I lived where most people did not stare at me on a regular basis, besides Japan. Japanese do stare a little in rural areas, but have the good manners to try and hide it. I would say that having a native population of dark Southern Indian Tamils helps, dark skin color is just not that shocking to anyone. In fact some small Singaporean children would think I was Indian. Being able to speak to everyone, not having a language barrier, really helps break the ice and get to know locals. I picked up some Singlish too, which also helped.

There is no place on earth free of racism and discrimination. There is no utopia. Black expats will never get the positive bias that white expats get, due to history and a perceived difference in economic, social, and military power that majority white nations have had on the world for the last 300 years. That being said, on a daily basis I did not think or worry about race, maybe because the vast majority of people did not act in a way that made me feel as if I was different.

In general I do not think Singaporeans are much more racist than white Americans, they are probably just less politically correct about it. Also keep in mind many people in Singapore are not Singaporean. If people are staring at you or openly talking about you in public, they are often Indians FROM INDIA or PRC (Chinese FROM CHINA), the former is probably the worst you will deal with, many can be extremely arrogant and ignorant (but not all, I've met good ones too...it's an issue of degree, not kind).